Author’s Note

This piece is about a feeling I’ve struggled to name for most of my life — a feeling that I have tried to explain more recently — a quiet but persistent disconnect that began when I was fourteen.

It isn’t about hating where I’m from.
It isn’t about romanticizing somewhere else.

It’s about that internal shift — the moment you realize you feel unrooted in a place where everyone else seems firmly planted.

For years, I thought I was running away.
Now I understand I’ve been moving toward something.

Whether that “home” is a city, a country, a person, or a version of myself I haven’t fully stepped into yet — I don’t know.

But I know this:
I am not lost anymore.
I am in motion.

— Rowan Evans

Toward Somewhere I Can Breathe
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’ve tried my whole life
to explain it.
This disconnect,
I’ve felt since
2004.

How can I make it
any more clear?
I just don’t belong here.

I’m going to try
and try to make it
make sense.
I was fourteen,
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi
on the screen.

But that’s not the important part.

Inside—
I could feel
threads fray,
and they
already existed
in decay.

But I learned quickly,
in 2007 exactly—
there is Filth in the Beauty,
and the reverse
can be the same.

That’s when
my view of the
world changed,
and became
cemented.

Something shifted,
vision cleared—
and everything
I missed before,
just appeared.

Where everyone
around me,
seemed rooted
in the here.

And I—
would close my eyes,
and wish upon
shooting stars.
I wanted out,
I wanted to leave,
go somewhere far.

I knew it would take time,
I needed things to align.
But now I know
what I’m moving toward,
what I’m working for.

I’m moving toward home.
A place, where I belong.

Maybe when I finally leave,
I’ll touch down in the Philippines
to walk Manila’s streets,
and finally be able to breathe.

If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]